Jack Crawford

Jack Crawford is a fictional character who appears in the Hannibal Lecter series of books by Thomas Harris, in which Crawford is the Agent-in-Charge of the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. He is modeled after John E. Douglas, who held the same position.

Film and television adaptations

The Crawford character appears in the film adaptations of Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs; he does not appear in the adaptation of Hannibal, although a deleted scene explains that he has died. He has been portrayed by four different actors:

Harvey Keitel in the 2002 adaptation of Red Dragon, which uses the novel's original title.

Laurence Fishburne in the television adaptation, Hannibal.

In the supplemental section on the special edition DVD of The Silence of the Lambs, Scott Glenn revealed that he was given audio tapes by John Douglas as a form of research for his character. The tapes were of several young women being tortured and raped in the back of a van by a pair of assailants. Upon questioning Douglas as to his motives for presenting these tapes, Douglas simply said to Glenn, "Now you are part of my world." This experience preyed upon Glenn's mind all throughout filming, and he refused to return to the role in the subsequent sequel because he didn't want to place himself in such a mindset again. To this day, he says that the tapes still cause him anxiety and bad dreams.